


Seeing Things

by Portia77



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canon deaths, Closure, F/M, Gen, Grief, Hallucinations, Mourning, post-beth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 04:10:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12645825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Portia77/pseuds/Portia77
Summary: “I think I’m goin’ crazy,” he whispers, and she smiles sympathetically at him with a nod.“Of course you are,” Beth sighs. “I’m dead, remember?”As if he ever forgot.*Or, Daryl buries the dead, but the dead just don't want to stay buried.





	Seeing Things

Her face is as sweet as he remembers it, smiling and dimpled and tilted like a curious puppy, waiting to greet you at the start of a day.

“Mornin,” she chirps, bright as the sun. Radiant and golden.

_All but for the bloody patch staining her hair, from the back of her head, running deadly rivulets down her curls._

He lurches forward from his reclined state on the ground, where he’d curled up sometime shortly before dawn. Memories of digging with his bare hands in the soft soil were foggy, but the crusted blood and mud under his nails tell all—and what that couldn’t, the freshly-laid grave does. The jerky movement sends his head spinning topsy-turvy, and he fights the urge to fall back down in his nausea.

He blinks once, twice, and she’s gone.

_She’s just…gone._

*

Hours pass since he woke up at Beth’s grave. He dug it himself in the night, and it took him to the wee hours of the morning to finish. Maggie and the others wanted to wait, but Daryl can’t wait. Daryl couldn’t leave her lying there, exposed and uncovered. She needs to be at rest, he murmurs to himself all night, until her body’s buried and the soil laid atop her like a blanket of protection.

It’s been hours, and still Daryl’s not sure what he saw when he woke. He was tired. He was dehydrated. He was grieving…

_He’s still all those things and more._

Aching as he is, Daryl forces himself on the move. _Go hunting_ , his brain says. The others need food. They need food to survive. Carol. Rick. Carl. Judith. Michonne. Glen. Maggie. Tyreese. Sasha. The others—well, he doesn’t give two shits about them, but they need to eat, too.

 _So many,_ he thinks to himself as he counts how many squirrels he needs to hunt today. Then he thinks, _so few,_ because he’s lost so much, more than he ever thought he had in the first place.

The woods where they camp are same old, same old. Tall reaching trees, with branches that sweep outwards high overhead. Virtually no bushes to hide in. Uneven terrain—hard to run fast on. Roots that trip you, slow you down and get you killed.

The forest is against us, Daryl thinks to himself, and rolls his eyes at his own stupidity. _The whole damn world is against us._

Hunting is a good distraction, but it comes to an end faster than he expected. Laden with dead squirrels draped over his shoulders, he trods back with his head down and his jaw clenched. Not since they set up camp has he seen any of them, looked them in the eye, and returning is a blessing and a curse.

With a swing of his arms, he drops the game (if you can call squirrel meat _game)_ at Carol’s feet. His eyes ghost over her, taking stock; she’s pale and shaky, and her eyes are red-rimmed much like his own, but she’s clear and awake when she looks up at him.

“Hey,” she whispers, as though afraid to be any louder. Something about it makes his heart break, because he knows it’s as much a learned habit as it is a conscious decision, but his own heartache keeps him cool to her.

Daryl grunts and leaves her as quickly as he came. Tyreese and Sasha are tending a fire, Michonne and Maggie are speaking with the Minister ( _chicken shit,_ he whispers in his mind), and Carl entertains the baby. Lil’ asskicker.

_So few. We’re so few._

He doesn’t even realize Rick’s gone, or at least doesn’t consider where Rick might be, before he’s gone back to her grave and found him there, crouched in the mud.

Daryl buried her under some old oak trees, strong and sturdy, as though he thought they’d protect her when he couldn’t. _When he hadn’t._ It’s a stupid thought, like so many others of his, but he’s too damn tired and sore to care.

When he sees Rick, his first thought is to turn and run, because he swore to himself as he buried Beth that he’d avoid the man, avoid his brother in arms, his _leader._

 _She’s dead because of me,_ he tells himself for the thousandth time. _If we’d listened to Rick, if I had told him to go ahead and storm the hospital, let me grab Beth and get her out…we’d have Beth and Carol both._ Both his favourite girls, back home safe. His throat tightens, and before he can run, Rick’s gone and turned around.

Rick looks half as miserable as Daryl feels, and that’s saying plenty.

“Sorry,” Daryl backs away with haste, but Rick is already standing, brushing the dirt off his pants.

“It’s alright,” Rick soothes in his signature way. Coaxing, the way he suspects Hershel spoke to horses and cattle. The thought of Hershel was usually both a blessing and a curse these days, but now it’s mostly a curse, it’s just another person Daryl failed along the way. In so many ways. “I was just leavin’.”

“You don’t have to,” but Daryl wants him to, and they both know it. Daryl wants her to himself, wants to sit at her feet and stare at nothing, guard her grave from walkers who might trample upon it.

“The others want to stay here for a while, get our bearings…regroup,” Rick coughs and looks away when his eyes shine too bright and his mouth trembles. He lost a daughter, Daryl thinks to himself, but knows better than to say so. _He lost a daughter and I lost…everything._

“Sounds good,” Daryl says, and it does. Nothing sounds better than sitting with her for the rest of his days, laying in the dirt while he sleeps and waking to the ghostly touch of her on his skin.

Rick walks past him in the direction Daryl just came. “You should leave.”

“What?” Daryl whips around sharply, eyes wide with disbelief and dread—because he saw this coming, saw it ever since the bullet went off and exited through the back of her skull—but he never thought Rick would actually do it.

Rick frowns at him, one foot poised to keep walking. “What, Daryl?”

“What did you say?”

He frowns more. “I didn’t say anything.”

Daryl sucks in a deep breath, brow furrowed. “I thought—”

“You should leave.” _There it is!_ But Rick’s mouth hadn’t opened, and the voice was most definitely not his southern rasp.

He turns on his heel again, 180 after 180, and there she is, standing with her hair pulled high on her head in that girlish style of hers.

Beth.

Beth?

His mouth is dry and he fights the urge to dry heave when he sees the long sweeping red stain arching down the front of her shirt. For all it matters to Beth, she acts like she can’t see it or feel it there.

Beth’s almost pouting at them, standing on the grave with her hands in her pockets, upset and at ease all at once.

“You should leave, before it gets later an’ you lose daylight. That’d be the smart thing to do.”

Daryl can’t speak a single word. If he’s never been sure of anything in his life, he’s sure of that now. His tongue has been welded to the roof of his mouth, and his throat might just swell up and close over altogether now.

 _Scolding_ him, he realizes with a jolt. She’s standing there with a stern frown of disapproval in her blue eyes and she’s _scolding_ them— _him._ He’s never been scolded by a ghost before.

He regroups as quickly as he can, forces his hands not to shake, keeps his eyes from watering. And uncertainly, he schools his face into a mask of casualness and turns back to a baffled Rick.

“Nothing,” he says simply. “It was nothing.”

The sheriff seems sorely tempted to argue, to pester Daryl until he caves, but something in the archer’s stance make him back down with reluctance.

“Squirrel’s for dinner,” Daryl adds, in hopes it’ll send Rick moving faster. “If you’re hungry.”

“Thanks,” Rick says, and it doesn’t escape his notice that he never said if he was even hungry.

But then he’s turning back to Beth, and it doesn’t matter. None of it matters, because she’s there, with her cute smile and her toes wiggling shyly into the ground, hands tucked into her back pockets as she gives him her nicest, sweetest grin.

“Hi,” she chirps, and he’s sorely tempted to laugh and cry and curse the gods who brought them here, half in the grave and half out.

“I think I’m goin’ crazy,” he whispers, and she smiles sympathetically at him with a nod.

“Of course you are,” Beth sighs. “I’m dead, remember?”

As if he ever forgot.

“You can’t be real,” he says it so calmly, like it’s a matter of saying it’s sunny outside.

“Why not?”

Everything about her is the same as it was then, when they were on the road and on each other’s backs all the time, and then defending each other and caring for each other— _he still feels her arms around him every now and then—_ all except for that damned red splatter down her shirt.

“’Cause you died,” he forces the words out now, and they almost bring dry heaves with them. “I buried you. You died.”

“Yeah.” She looks close to laughing, but not _at_ him. Her look is cheeky, but not malicious. Beth could live a hundred years and never be malicious. (And God does he wish she got a hundred more). “What’s your point?”

“You’re _gone,”_ he hisses, anger bubbling in him. He hates these words, hates them more than anything else, more than that gun that misfired at her even. “You’re gone and you can’t…you can’t _be here,_ so I’m crazy! I’ve lost it! Throw me in the damn loony bin and lock the door!”

“You’ll bring the others here if you keep it up.” But she doesn’t sound worried when she says it, more matter of fact. Its truthfulness makes his voice lower at once.

“The hell with everyone else,” he spits, and swallows nervously at her. “ _Am_ I crazy?”

“I think we all went a little crazy, after dead people started walking around.”

“Can…can the others…?”

Her face falls in disappointment, and she shakes her head sadly. “No,” Beth whispers. “No, I don’t think so. I thought maybe Rick…” Her eyes wander to the forest trail Rick Grimes disappeared down, and sighs again. “He just looked at me though. I don’t think he believed I was there, if he saw me at all.”

“Well, y’ain’t.”

“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” Beth props either hand on her hip, head tilted impishly at him. “You’re here. Maybe I’m here too.”

“You’re dead. I buried you.” Tears burn his eyes and blur his vision. Beth swims in his gaze all the while, a golden haze of beauty, surrounded by forest green and blood red.

_You just see another dead girl._

_I don’t,_ he wants to tell her. _I don’t, I can’t, I won’t._ But he doesn’t say that. Only says it again, “I buried you. You died.”

“Yeah. But I’m _here_ too. Maybe I can be both.”

*

“Hey.” Daryl looks over his shoulder to see Michonne striding over to him, almost jogging to keep up. Her katana is slung at her hip, and though she keeps a palm over it, it stays sheathed.

“What,” Daryl mutters, because his heart isn’t in the act of pretending, not now, not anymore.

Michonne doesn’t seem to take offense to him, though, and pants for a few seconds from her exhaustion. They’re on a supply run, and on foot. Daryl is in charge, and he decided he wanted to walk there, so they walked. But everyone’s dog-tired, Michonne and Tyreese and Rosita and Abraham, and sometimes Daryl forgets that they’re not running on crazed, grief-fumes like he is.

Daryl doesn’t mind the ache in his chest, not if it will smother the throbbing, shattering grief in his heart. Not if the sound of his shallow panting will blot out the sound the gun misfiring.

“How are you holding up?” she asks lowly, like it’s a secret that he’s falling apart at the seams.

Daryl grunts, oddly amused— _if only she knew._

Michonne doesn’t wait for an answer she knows ain’t coming. “I talked to Rick. He says…you heard something. Earlier.”

In defensive, clipped words, “Yeah? So? Hear lotsa things.”

“Well, I just…I wanted to tell you— _damn it_ , quit walking so fast.” She finally convinces him to stop striding in aimless directions, and pulls them both to a halt. The others are ahead of them, politely pretending not to notice.

He can only hold Michonne’s gaze for a few seconds before his eyes cast downwards again, over and over. It’s hard, because he’s so scared she’ll look at him and _know,_ she’ll realize how messed up he is inside, like he’s got a thousand bits and pieces from a watch that aren’t aligned, aren’t meshing right. _Cogs,_ that’s what they are. All the cogs turning inside of him are unhinged, and he’s not sure they’ll ever run right again (if they even did).

“I just wanted to tell you that…well, we’re all here. For you, I mean. If you need something… It’s ok to need help. And,” she looks deep into his eyes, “it’s not your fault.”

His heart stutters and stops for a moment.

“What?”

Michonne never gets nervous, but she certainly looks it now, clenching her fists, straining her jaw. It’s a foreign look on her face. “It’s not your fault. I know what you’re thinking—”

“You don’t know _shit_ about what I’m thinkin’.”

“Daryl, she’s just tryin’ to be nice.”

At once all the air rushes from his lungs and he sags in regret. Michonne’s baffled in front of him, but he can’t bring himself to care, the same way he can’t bring himself to look at the pretty blond girl at his side, frowning at him so much he can hear her disappointment in her words.

“Look, I just wanted to tell you that she was a beautiful person, and I’m damn sorry for what happened to her.”

Daryl stands there, breathing deeply with his chin tucked into his chest, trying to ignore the chattering sound of Beth beside him, urging him to apologize ‘cause it’s the _nice_ thing to do.

_The good ones don’t last. It don’t make no sense being nice anymore._

And though he whole-heartedly believes it now, even if there had been a time when he didn’t, he grudgingly squares his feet, raises his chin and mumbles to her, “Thanks.”

Been a long damn time since he thanked anyone and meant it.

“You’re welcome,” and then she’s gone, walking off not in anger, but in understanding that he wants to be left alone.

Except he’s not alone. Hasn’t been alone since he went to that grave yesterday morning.

“Thank you,” Beth whispers, and for the first time for hours he lets himself look at her, standing there in under the trees, a pattern of leafy shadows crossing her face.

“You look so real.” He says it without thinking, and is damn grateful that they’ve fallen behind where no one will hear them. Rosita is holding Abraham’s hand up ahead, and Michonne has struck up conversation with Tyreese, about Daryl no doubt. He’s seen the way they look at him, the dubious glances sent his way.

“So do you.” Her grin is all teasing and playful, though he can’t see how, or why. She’s _dead._ She’s still soaked in her own blood, for crying out loud.

“Can’t you clean that off,” and he gestures vaguely to the front of her shirt where the stains are the worst. The back of her head, too, but he hardly ever sees that, since she’s talking to him most of the time.

Beth chews her lip and looks down in dismay. “I don’t know how. Maybe you could help me?”

They start walking again, and Daryl doesn’t want to talk anymore, not when the others might hear him and think he’s talking to himself. The last thing he needs is for everyone to think he’s gone mad.

“What do you want me to do, take a wet cloth and wash you off?” He scoffs at the absurdity, and the image of a wet cloth passing through nothingness comes to mind. “I don’t think it’ll work.”

“You could try,” she suggests, all bright and happy. “When we get back from the supply run.”

 _There is no we,_ he wants to shout at her. _You’re dead. Dead, y’hear?_

All he says is, “we’ll see,” under his breath, and Beth smiles like she knows she’s won.  

*

When they get back, Daryl grabs a cloth while Beth practically skips alongside him, cheering as he leads her to the creek he found a while back. Michonne offered to unload the supplies they found, and Daryl’s happy to let her after carrying the bulk of it back on his own. (Beth playfully offered to help him, but he ignored her until she stopped and sulked behind them the way back).

Now they’re walking to the creek with Daryl grumbling to himself, to _Beth_ in reality, but to himself to anyone from the group who spies him.

“I can’t wait to see baby Judy try that bubble mix we found. Someone’ll have to blow it for her, probably Carl or maybe Tara or Tyreese. You should try it, it might cheer you up.”

It won’t. Beth is dead. Nothing will make that better, not even her spirit’s annoying-ass shadow.

“C’mon, let’s get you cleaned up.”

Daryl crouches at the waterside and wets the rag briskly. “Easiest if you gimme your shirt.”

“Ok,” Beth concedes, “no peeking though.”

“Right,” he mutters, and keeps his head down, because he has no desire to see what’s underneath the shirt of a ghost, or the figment of his imagination.

A few seconds later, the wavering image of a yellow shirt swims in his view, offered to him by the hand with a bracelet with a cross on it. “Here,” she says shyly, and he remembers almost too late not to look at her.

The shirt is…not solid. It’s not really there, and he knows it. But he can _see_ it in his hands, and maybe he’s making it up but he can almost feel it there too.

“Is it coming out?” she asks, worried and inquisitive.

“Hold on already,” Daryl murmurs, and bunches the shirt in his fists. His nails dig into his palms, _there’s nothing there,_ but he can still feel it, still see it bunch up.

Feeling stupid and curious, Daryl begins to scrub the shirt against the rocks as Beth starts humming her happy tune, an old country song she favored from her childhood days, he thinks.

His knuckles scrape and rub against the imbedded rocks, but the satisfaction of the blood washing away is worth the pain of it all. It’s like he’s actually fixing it, making something right, and it feels good in a way burying Beth never did. Because Beth didn’t belong in the ground, but blood doesn’t belong in her shirt. So it helps, and he’s privately glad she insisted on it. Stubborn little Beth.   

“What are ya doin’?”

His head snaps up and turns around on his shoulders to where Maggie and Glenn have just appeared at the top of the hill, coming towards them slowly. Judith is in her arms, and Beth makes an excited sound at the sight.

“Maggie!” she smiles in relief. “And Judith! She is ok! See? Told ya.”

Ok is a generous word for what Maggie is, and Daryl thinks she might look worse off than him and Rick combined. Glenn keeps a hand hovering around her, as though he worries she’ll collapse and drop Judith or something. But Maggie’s grip on Judith is strong, even if the one on her sanity falters.

“What are you doing?” she repeats, frowning not unkindly at Daryl. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“He’s cleaning my shirt,” Beth babbles excitedly, as though she’s forgotten Maggie can’t see or hear her. It’s incredibly distracting. “What are you doing here, Maggie? Taking Judith for a walk? She likes when you bounce her—but be careful! Sometimes she tries to kick away from ya. She’s stronger than she looks.”

Daryl answers Maggie at last. “Just washing my hands. Damn mud everywhere…”

He doesn’t mention the grave to Maggie, but she knows immediately what he’s talking about anyways. Her face falls more, if that’s even possible, and Glenn grimaces in discomfort.

“Daryl!” Beth hisses urgently, “can I have my shirt back?” When he turns to her, she’s got a hand strapped across her breasts, pinning them down against her firmly, the other arm wrapped about her middle.

“Judith decided she wanted to make mud pies,” Maggie says in a strained voice, unable to look at Daryl any longer. “I offered to clean her up.” And when he looks at lil’ asskicker, he realizes it’s true. She’s got her pudgy fingers coated and caked in mud, but unlike Daryl she seems utterly delighted about it.

“She’s so big,” Beth murmurs distractedly, and then motions to him again for her shirt. He makes a vague gesture in her direction and uncurls his fist as he does, letting the phantom fabric slip out of his hands. “Thanks!” Beth gushes earnestly, and there’s a rustle as she slides it back on her body.

“Have fun with that,” Daryl says, and stalks off away from them, and though Beth follows, she spends the walk begging him to stay and talk longer. But the thought of standing in front of Maggie with Beth’s translucent ghost at his shoulder makes his belly churn worse than sour milk.

*

Beth leaves him be for a few hours, and where she runs off to is beyond his knowledge. He has half a mind to sleep in the meantime, to hie off into the protection of a tall tree and snooze there for an hour or so where no one can find him, and where he won’t feel the need to cower in shame next to Rick.

He _should_ be sleeping now that she’s left him be for a while, and knowing that the group wants to pack up and leave as soon as possible (though they have nowhere to go _to_ ), but he’s wide awake, and he’s wide awake when he sees a golden streak of light come whirring between the trees to him, where he’s half-curled upon her grave.

There’s a moment where he relaxes to see her ( _so damn real)_ but then he gets a good look at her face, and he’s on his feet before she can explain herself.

“You have to come!” she’s crying in earnest, and tries to seize his elbow. The fingers float through his shirt unnervingly, and he half-thinks that he can feel her if he focuses, but then she’s talking again, running ahead. “Hurry, there’s not much time!”

She leads him away from the camp, east, in the direction of the school. Daryl racks his brain for reasons, for an idea as to who would be out this way and why. Michonne and Sasha are on patrol, it would never carry them out this far. And Rick and Carl are back at the camp, where Rick’s teaching Carl how to fish with some makeshift net Glenn and Tara rigged up.

Then he sees her, and his heart leaps in his chest.

Silver hair, tall and proud even when she was as beaten down as he was. She’s fighting the good fight, always does, but he can tell she’s tired even before he reaches her after hacking through no fewer than five walkers.

“We gotta go!” he shouts, careless of the volume of his voice. With all the racket the walkers have kicked up, it’s gonna draw more to them regardless of how he talks. “Carol!”

She nods, and together they flee, Beth leading the way. Behind him, Carol’s muttering how she saw berry plants here somewhere, and how desperate she is for some other food, and how there were no walkers one minute, then a dozen swarming her.

Then she’s asking, “How did you know where I was?”

Daryl’s eyes watch Beth’s golden figure prance and flicker out of sight, and the vanishing act brings an ache in his chest strong enough to wind him.

They ran for nearly twenty minutes in a very opposite direction to where the group was, to lead the walkers away from them. Carol might have done it anyways, but Daryl doesn’t want them where he’s laid Beth to rest only recently, only two days ago.

“Christsakes, woman,” he hisses, doubled over and heaving for air at long last, after losing them in a wild chase. “What were you thinking, going off alone!”

“Well, why did you follow me alone?” Carol asks pointedly, and he reminds himself that saying _Beth was with me_ isn’t a viable option. “And how did you know where I was?”

“I just…” he sighs and looks through the trees in the direction of camp. “I don’t know. Instinct. Tracking.”

“And you started running, soon as you saw my footprints?” Carol’s both in disbelief and hysterics. Near-death experiences tend to do that, even when they happen as often as they do nowadays.

“Maybe. Could be.”

Carol lets it drop, and they make the walk back to camp in silence, each brooding in their own little world.

*

“Why don’t you sleep?”

Beth’s suggestion is wind to him. He would like nothing more than to drift off into numbness for a few hours, where’s he’s made his camp under a rock wall not far from the others. Rick knows where he is, and the rest don’t dare to question him when he’s this angry.

“M not tired,” he says, sitting with his back to the wall and knees bent to his chest. “Can’t sleep,” he corrects himself, because truthfully he’s _damned_ exhausted.

“Oh. Why?”

She does this a lot. “Because.” _Because you died,_ he meant to say, but the words lodge in his throat this time. He’s said it countless times to her, because she keeps on forgetting, keeps on forgetting she’s not really _there._ Trying to talk to others, trying to pick up little leaves and twigs, trying to kill the occasional walker that passes by. She’s not there.

Beth thankfully realizes what he meant anyways, and her face falls in disappointment. “Oh. Right.”

Fighting the strangest urge to apologize, Daryl leans back and looks out at the forest ahead of them. He hasn’t afforded himself the luxury of looking at the blond girl following him too often, for when he does, she always notices. She’s always watching him. It’s not unpleasant, but it makes him tingle all over and his heart race a touch faster.

But he looks at her now, in the night air. “What’s it like?” he asks quietly, trying to remind himself that _she’s dead,_ and she’s not ever coming back. It’s easy to forget when she’s chattering away to him throughout the day, but it doesn’t change the truth of the matter.

Beth is gone, and this figment he’s created isn’t her.

“What’s what like?”

“Being dead.”

She frowns unhappily, like she’s offended by the frankness of his question. “Oh, uh… I don’t really know.”

“You don’t know?” Daryl scowls at her. “You damn well know. You’re dead, ain’t ya?”

She’s getting flustered. “Yeah, I guess, but—”

“No! There’s no guessing!” Daryl stands now, his temper rising with him. “You’re dead! You’re dead, and it ain’t my fault! I _tried_ saving you. I damn well did it, didn’t I? Got you out of there, didn’t I? Carried your b-body, didn’t I?” His chin is quivering uncontrollably, and his body is seconds from breaking down into gut-wrenching sobs once more. “It ain’t my fault you went and tried to be the hero. Noah was fine going with them!”

“They were beating him,” she says in a small voice, and he _hates_ himself, oh he hates himself, but he hates her too, maybe, for leaving him behind. Just a little.

Nowhere near as much as he lo--…

“’S not my fault,” he repeats viciously. “It ain’t.”

“I know,” Beth whispers, and though she’s timid her honesty is strong. “I know it’s not.”

“What’s not your fault?”

Daryl aims his crossbow with a warning glare, and glowers at Rick standing in the shadows. The sheriff steps out with both hands up, looking utterly unafraid.

“I think perhaps you and I ought to have a little talk.”

*

“Carol was pretty shook up this morning,” Rick says, and it doesn’t take Daryl by surprise in the least that he’s opened with Carol. For Daryl, she’s as safe a subject as Rick can get, and the redneck don’t blame him for that at all.

“She said you saved her from a damn scary mess,” Rick’s watching Daryl like he’s trying to burn holes in his head. Maybe he is.

 _My fault,_ Daryl reminds himself over and over. _Beth’s gone and it’s my fault._

“Right time, right place is all.”

“Right,” Rick agrees, and it’s both mild and suspicious. It gets Daryl’s back up almost immediately.

“What, you think I followed her?” Daryl spat at the ground angrily. “I don’t got the best manners, but I know that woman can take care of herself.” _Most of the time,_ he corrects, and suddenly realizes just how close he came to losing Carol this morning.

“I know she can,” Rick’s quick to appease. “I know she’s strong.” Of course he did—Rick had sent her away under promises of her so-called strength. (Which is still not something Daryl’s truly forgiven him for, for coming back empty-handed and short his dearest friend).

“You know, you’re not the only one hurting about Beth.” When Daryl flinches, bracing for the anger, Rick backpedals faster than a corvette in reverse down a straight line. “What I mean, is we’re here for you. If you need it. We understand it hurts.” His eyes are shining bright with tears. Daryl’s gaze drops twice as fast as he’d lifted it.

“I used to see Lori,” Rick says, and it surprises Daryl greatly that he confessed it more than the fact he did.

“How often?”

Rick shrugs. “Every now and then. Just flickers. She'd be gone by the time I started walking to her.”

Daryl chewed his tongue briefly. “What'd she say?”

Rick looks a bit startled at the question. “Nothing,” he says, and the word is sadder and sorrier than he's ever heard Rick sound. “Not once.”

And Daryl suddenly feels an appreciation for Beth’s apparition, grateful that she stays and talks and helps, because he knows if he were to live with her ghost standing twenty feet from him constantly, it would kill him. Break him and kill him.

“How often...?”

“Everywhere,” Daryl says simply, unable to meet Rick's gaze. “All the time.”

“All the time?” he echoes in shock. “You mean—”

"On your left, within arm’s reach. She’s smiling at you."

When he looks up because Rick has said nothing, he finds the man with the face of someone punched in the gut, nearly doubled over. Rick’s blue eyes water for a moment before he sucks in a deep calming breath.

“Can you…can you tell her something?” Rick whispers, and even Daryl can feel the tightness in the other man’s throat.

“Sure,” Daryl says with a shrug.

“Tell her…I’m sorry. Sorry I didn’t move faster. Sorry I didn’t think.”

“Then we should all tell her that,” Daryl snaps, and scowls at him for a split second, then it’s gone. If anyone should be apologizing, it’s him. Daryl’s the one Rick looked to, Daryl’s the one he sought advice from. Had Daryl not decided to take the high ground this one fucking time, Beth would still…she would still… “She, uh, she said she doesn’t blame you. And that she’s…sorry for putting herself in harm’s way. And Judith is beautiful—won’t shut up about that.” And he rumbles under his breath for it, because Beth’s being all sunshine and lollipops with Daryl while he tries telling Rick he can talk to dead people.

“Well,” Rick sighs and brushes off his pants with ease. “I can give you advice on this much. Talk to her. Find out what’s wrong, what she wants. Why’s she haunting you?”

“It’s not haunting,” Daryl says at once, before Beth can get all uppity. “She’s just…there.”

“Well,” Rick looks up at the sky skeptically, like the answers are up there. “You sort this out. We’ll wait. But you’re no good if you can’t walk around without seeing Beth everywhere you go.”

“Why not? It don’t affect me none!”

“When I saw Lori, I drew my gun on a couple innocent people. Tyreese and Sasha, if you remember.”

Rick’s so blunt about it that it catches Daryl off guard for a good twenty seconds. The sheriff takes that time to sweep in and make his final point, standing tall and confident over him, hands on his waist.

“I’m worried about you. I’m not trying to judge or make you feel…broken. S’not like that. I just want you to be ok.”

“I’m _fine._ I told you, it’s just—”

“When I saw Lori, it was because I…” he trails off uncertainly, and frowns. “Well. It’s ‘coz I had loose ends to tie. Seeing her actually helped me tie ‘em. Maybe Beth can help you with yours.”

Daryl’s eyes flick almost imperceptibly in the direction Beth’s sitting, for a moment so brief he didn’t think Rick had even noticed. If he had, he said nothing.

Beth’s watching Daryl, watching him as intently as though he’s the only thing left in this miserable world.

_You’re gonna miss me so bad when I’m gone, Daryl Dixon._

“I just wanna help,” she whispers, when both Rick and Daryl say nothing. Obviously Rick doesn’t hear her, but something inside the ranger caves in at the sound of her southern voice, sweet as honey.

“I guess,” Daryl sighs and looks around the forest where he’s tucked himself into a cave embedded in stone.

*

“How come the others can’t see you?”

Beth considers his question for some time, her lips pursing in a familiar way that eases the constant pressure in his chest.

“Well,” she begins with some doubt in her tone, “Tyreese and Sasha don’t know me well.” _Didn’t,_ Daryl wants to correct her, but bites his tongue at the last second. “And I never met Abraham or Eugene or Rosita or Tara. I think Michonne likes me fine, but… Well, maybe she’s got her own ghosts to deal with.” Beth shrugs, and it makes Daryl frown quickly in confusion.

“What, Michonne sees people? Who?”

“That’s for her to know,” Beth says lightly, though he feels thoroughly chastised all the same. “And Carol doesn’t need me none. She’s tough—if she were gonna see ghosts, she’d see Sophia, wouldn’t she?” Her practically is oddly calming, and lets Daryl relax a bit as he distances himself from the surrealism of it all. He’s sitting here talking to a ghost, a spirit, a goddamned hallucination (although he’s started doubting the latter, started hesitating ever since he realized Beth had _saved Carol,_ in a way, and hallucinations can’t do that, can they?), and Daryl’s leaning on the rock wall with his bow in hand, propped between his knees. No walkers have come this way for hours, and he wonders if it’s luck or something more.

“I thought Rick _could_ see me,” Beth sighs, a bit disappointed. “But no, I don’t think… No. Carl’s a kid, he don’t need to see me either.”

“And Maggie?” asks Daryl quietly. “Your sister? She’s hurtin’, Beth.”

Her face falls in perfect sorrow, lip quivering emotionally. “I know. I wish I could fix it. But she’s got Glenn. I think they can lean on each other. They don’t need me.”

And Daryl realized the truth of it; Glenn and Maggie, Rick and Carl. _They can lean on each other._ But not him, he’s got no one. Maybe Carol, but she’s strong on her own. She doesn’t need him.

“And you think I need you?”

Beth’s mouth twitched at the corners like she was trying to hide a sad smile. “Daryl Dixon, I think you miss me so bad it hurts to breathe.”

 _You don’t even know,_ he thinks to himself, shutting his eyes against the setting sun. _You don’t even know._

*

Hours pass. All he’s got is the oil lamp Rick’s left him, his crossbow and gun, the knife at his side and a can of red kidney beans dropped off for him some two hours ago. It’s dark out, and they’ve sat in silence long enough. Even Daryl, quiet Daryl who hates talking for any reason, knows it’s time to let out all the unsaid secrets longing to come out.

He’s kept her for himself long enough.

“Beth…”

She smiles at him sadly from her place across from him. She’s sitting, cross-legged and patient as ever.

“I’d give anything,” Daryl swallows thickly. “ _Anything_.”

He doesn’t need to continue. She nods gently at him, her face awash in kindness and understanding.

“I know, honey. I know.” Beth sighs. “I wish I could’ve stayed,” she says, then adds in a small voice, “with you.”

Daryl’s face twists in agony—this is fucking _agony—_ and Beth makes a noise of sorrow and pity, reaching for him briefly then thinking better of it.

“I wanna show you somethin’,” she murmurs, and gets to her feet. “Don’t move. And don’t you close your eyes, Daryl Dixon.”

She’s washed in soft starlight, a bath of the heavens and the moon and the oil lamp on the table. Though his mouth is dry, his face feels warm, and it’s all he can do not to close his eyes and try to imprint this first initial glimpse into his mind forever.

One at a time the clothes peel away on their own accord, no motion of her arms or fingers to guide them. First the sweater, clean and soft as a lamb to look at. Then the cotton shirt slides off her figure and into nothingness. Skintight jeans, as unforgiving to pull on as take off, shimmy down and away with a velvet glide.

And then she’s there, in a white blouse that’s sheer and simple and sweet—and it’s everything Daryl imagines Beth would be. The shirt blurs both of her dusty rose nipples, but the rest is clear, clear enough that his heart damn near weeps at the sight of her.

Everything about her is symmetrical. Twin ridges for her clavicle, pointed out from her skin. Rounded shoulders, none too bony or hard. Arms as soft as roses—he would know, he remembers carrying her close out of Grady, remembers stroking a finger over her cold arm just to make sure, just to remind himself she wasn’t sleeping—and hands gentle enough to match.

The rest is new. The curve of her breasts, the brush of moonlight down the middle of her belly. She has three freckles, one two inches over her belly button (a puckered inward indentation, stretched and narrowed by the tautness of her stomach), another just under her left ribcage, and the largest above her hipbone. He wants nothing more than to trace one finger—just one—from point to point, to map out the loveliest constellation the world’s ever seen. Something shows on his face, for she smiles in a crooked, tender way at him.

“You can touch…if you wanna.”

But Daryl shakes his head at once. No, her skin ain’t for touching. Or tasting or stroking, least of all with his dirty hands. This body was meant to be painted, pictured, immortalized in stone. Maybe if she was there with him, flesh and blood and all that… But she’s not, and the feel of her slippery, translucent figure under his hands would only ruin the memory.

Best to just imagine and wonder and want.

His eyes wander over the thatch of dark curls covering her most secret of places, but they don’t linger. That’s not for him either, not even to look at.

Her thighs are stronger than he remembers them last, two powerful limbs that carried her alongside him for days in those woods together. He’s half-tempted to ask her to turn around so he can get the better view, half-tempted to ask she pull her hair to the side and over the shoulder, show him her long graceful spine. But then she’s giggling and spinning about without him even asking, wrapping up her hair in a fist and holding it away from her neck, flexing shoulder blades in the process.

Perfect. Everything about her is perfect. Not a single mark on her—and it’s the truth. No scars from the time she spent on the run, no nicks and cuts to blemish her. She’s smooth and supple and soft, and her spine arches exactly as he thought it would.

Her bottom is small, but curved nicely. Long thighs lead to the backs of her knees, then she’s turning back around and he watches her knees, her calves, her ankles. At the bottom, resting on the soil are ten perfect toes, short and round and wiggling slowly in the soil.

When he looks up at her face, she’s staring at him with a calm, patient expression that renders him speechless yet again.

After a few tries, he gets his mouth working. “Wanna see me now?”

It’s mostly teasing—who would want to see his broken-down ramshackle body?—but fair’s fair, and if there’s a chance she’s the real spirit of Beth (and Daryl can’t decide one way or another), if she’s real, then he wants to give her the chance to say yes or no. The chance she never got when she was alive.

It takes her a while to decide, and he fights his insecurities of years upon years of abuse to wait in silence for her answer. At last, like a reward or a punishment for being so patient (he’s not sure which), Beth’s lips curve upwards at the corners just a touch, and she says quietly, “Yes please.” Please, with the sweetest, most sensual murmur in her throat.

Daryl’s not a ghost or a spirit or a figment of his own imagination, so he has to stand and remove his clothes himself. Nor does he have the blessing of a white undershirt falling over his shoulders by the time he’s stripped to the bone. No, he bares all for her, all his flesh and blood for her to see.

He’s thin as rails, he knows it. Wonders if it’s unpleasant to look at, his bony ribs and his sallow cheeks. Tattoos litter his body almost as much as the scars do, spindly letters over his chest, around his waist, down his sides, arms, legs. They’ve almost grown on him, as though they were always apart of him and just waiting to come out. Between his legs, his cock swells half-hearted and half-hard, both from Beth’s disrobing and his own nakedness. And unlike Daryl, who hardly looked at her there, Beth’s eyes linger shamelessly and unafraid at his sex.

“’s not much,” Daryl grunts, tries smirking a bit and falls short about a mile.

Beth doesn’t even pretend to laugh at the joke, but meets his gaze with every shred of honesty and solemnity he’s never known. “You’re beautiful, Daryl Dixon.”

And in all honesty, he can’t remember a single time anyone said that to him. Not even as a joke.

Something in him crumples for a minute, and all his innards drop to his knees, dragging him down with them. Gasping breaths choke him, as he tries not to weep like a little boy in front of her.

“I want you to remember this,” Beth whispers, and she’s there before him, kneeling with him, peering up at him with anxious, earnest blue eyes. “I want you to remember this night forever. When you’re sad or scared or lonely…you can always remember me. Always.”

“I won’t forget you,” he croaks, hands and knees in the dirt, shaking his head. “I ain’t ever… _Ever_.”

“Good,” Beth smiles warmer than she’s done all night, and waits for him to calm down until she talks again. “I’ll be waiting. For when you’re ready.” Then, with firmness, “a _long_ time from now, Daryl Dixon.”

That raises a laugh from him, not because what she said is funny (in fact the thought of being parted for much longer makes his chest tighten and shrivel painfully) but the way she says it, like she’s commanding him not to die.

He wishes he’d had the foresight to command the same of her.

Daryl dresses, slides his pants back on knowing it would do no good to be unprepared in a world so unpredictable. The last thing he wants is to have to explain to Rick or Glenn why he stripped naked behind the woods. “Stay with me,” he begs, before he can stop himself, urgent and unsure.

“Ok,” Beth answers, and sits at his side, humming under her breath while he slides under the cover of the rough-stitched blanket and curls on his side to look at her.

“You’re…beautiful, Beth Greene.”

She blinks at him, surprised, and smiles at him, subdued and dreamy. A dream, he thinks to himself as sleep worms over. She’s a dream.

“Goodnight, Daryl.” He barely hears her whisper, quiet as she is. He only sees the curve of her lips as she speaks.

Daryl falls asleep looking at her.

*

When he wakes, she’s gone.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this immediately after Beth's death, and just never got around to posting it. I was so heartbroken after that episode - I stopped watching TWD, to be honest with you. It felt (and still feels) so cruel.
> 
> This was just my attempt at finding some sort of closure for me and for Daryl. And even for Beth.
> 
> Thanks for reading.


End file.
